Always
by XsilverXdoeX
Summary: DH SPOILERS! Snape musing about Lily in their fourth or third year at Hogwarts.


Always

--

I will begin by saying that I love you and I always have.

Yet I do not pretend that you are flawless. You have flaws and weaknesses, the greatest being this; you see what you want to see in people. You see the light and not the shadow that ripples from a fresh-lit candle. You see the color of the sunset and not the inky dark that is closing in. You saw that I was loyal to you and not that I was becoming everything we had once loathed together.

You saw the candlelight glinting off his eyes and not his glasses; the perfectness of his face and not the smirk that twisted it.

With each day, your eyes see me more clearly and he through a denser veil. Each time we speak to one another now, it leads to the promises I haven't kept and the secrets that I have. Each time you sit down to eat in the Great Hall, you sit one place nearer to him and your gaze travels to him more frequently. This morning at breakfast, I saw something very incriminating, something you would lie about and deny when I asked. When your eyes strayed towards him, he met them with his own and smiled a little. Once you would have stuck out your tongue or scowled, but no more. Do you know what you did?

You smiled right back at him.

You smiled at James Potter. I saw it with my own two eyes and I hardly believe it. If I had not seen his insufferable strutting increase in arrogance, I would be sure I imagined it. But only you could bestow him with such a gift. Only you could have such a profound effect on him. He who is usually so focused on the wonderful human art that is himself. If you were not so blind, you would use this power to your advantage. No, no, _you_ wouldn't, but anyone else would. You care too deeply and feel the emotions of others too completely to ever abuse your power over James Potter.

The reason I love you is also what enfuriates me with you.

If you were the sort of person who could hurt anyone, opposed to feeling their pain more intensely than they do, would I love you? If you did not stop to ask strangers why they are crying or mend schoolbags with your wand across a corridor before the owner even realized they were tearing, would I love you? Would I lie awake staring at the velvet green canopy of my bed in the Slytherin Boys Dormitory and pretend that the wetness on my cheeks is not tears? Would I cry for you?

Would I have to cry at all?

There was a time when I naively thought we would inevitably fall in love, but if that day is to come, what is it waiting for? Surely, I am ready. At any moment I would gladly confess my love or sweep you into my arms (as well as one so ungraceful as myself could) if I knew I would not be made a fool by your response. Is there not a portion of me that wants to sweep you into my arms and make us disappear without your consent? Would you really hate me for it? Even if you haven't and never will fall in love with me, we have been best friends for years. You have shared secrets with me. You have shared textbooks with me. You have shared candies from Honeydukes with me. If you could share so much with me, why couldn't you share a kiss or a bed or the future?

Or is the difference between friendship and love really so vast?

So, what precisely is it that is growing between you and James Potter, whom you swore to always hate? Do not tell me that I am imagining it, because I can see the tension rippling in the air between the two of you. I saw the blush that blossomed in your cheeks when you smiled at him over breakfast. I saw you catch your breath when he looked away. I saw it but unease swelled in me like a tumor. And also like a tumor, with every moment it grows and it is bringing me a pain beyond any I have ever brought upon myself before. Once you said I was self-destructive, but you never knew how very right you were. Do you want out of our friendship pact? Do you in fact not hate the Marauders as violently as you claim? I know and have known for years that Potter wanted you, fancied you, that is, and that was why you had such a strange and dramatic effect on him. Never, in a million years, would I have believed you had it in yourself to return his feelings.

I don't believe you have yet recognized it for what it is.

Potter will not take you from me, though. He is all that I am not and has all that I don't, but he will never have you. Everything that you are is precious to me, even the things that anger me or irritate me. Even your flaws, your weaknesses, your blindness. Everything about you is unique and special and beautiful. When you have a cold and your eyes get watery and your breath whistles in your nostrils and you sneeze like a cat. When you are angry and a wind seems to automatically materialize around you to keep your red hair airbourne and your eyes flash jade and emerald. When you laugh. When you study till one and are hardly awake the entire following day. When you look at me with one eyebrow raised skeptically. I love it all. Potter could never appreciate everything that comes to life in your spirit; unbridled summer and sun-glittering snow and Phoenix song.

Something inside me tells me that if you left my life and chose to go with Potter--if he won you, stole you, took you--it would be the death of us all. It would be a horrible thing--the very worst thing--and I cannot allow it to be.

Because I love you and I always have. I always will.

--Fin--


End file.
